Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (12 page)

When I met Graciela, though, she helped me take it to another level. After all, what kind of fun is being “your own man” when you can conspire with a like-minded accomplice to achieve a higher plane of stupidity?

“Tell them we had sex,” Grac said once. We were smoking pot and trying to think of new ways to disquiet my parents.

“That’s just mean.” Even the gays know which lines aren’t crossed. “It’ll get my dad’s hopes up too much. And you’re already on thin ice with my mom. Too risky.”

“You want another hit?” Grac knew the herb would get us thinking.

“Okay. I know. I’ll tell them I sprained—or broke?—my arm because I was dancing in a tub full of corn oil. And that you told me to do it.”

“Too much of me telling you to do stuff,” reasoned Grac. “I need to be involved but not totally responsible. Especially since you’ve been warned—”

“To be my own man. Okay.”

*   *   *

When your life and job are a little twisted, it’s easy for plots to just appear. “Okay, so I told you that Queerdonna was a no-show at Bank last night,” Grac said on the sixteenth minute of our fourth conversation of the morning. Even though we both had busy jobs, it was amazing how much time we were still able to spend on the phone with each other.

“Yeah, so who’d you get to replace her?” Queerdonna was the three-hundred-pound hairy Madonna impersonator who was just one of the colorful characters in Grac’s life working for Kelly Cutrone.

“Lady Bunny did two numbers. Anyway, Queerdonna came by the office today and thought tonight was the night. And still wanted to get paid even though she missed it, the fat fuck!” And, without missing a beat, Graciela said: “Hey. Tell your parents you’re an Indian.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tell them that you’re convinced you’re, like, an Indian.”

I can guarantee that at that time we weren’t the only two jackasses who still didn’t know you were supposed to say “Native American.”

“Okay … What kind?”

“A Shawnee?”

A scheme was hatched. An ill-advised, politically incorrect scheme. “I’m gonna tell my mom that you introduced me to some guy at a club who looks just like me, and that he’s an Indian. An actual Indian, a Shawnee.” My mind was spinning. “And that, wow, do we really look alike. That’s all I’ll say, but I’ll mention him in a week or so and keep bringing him in and that’s maybe how I’ll eventually be convinced…”

“That you’re a Shawnee, too,” said Graciela.

We put our work aside for much of that day, calling each other back and forth about eighteen times. Who could work? Besides, CBS should have been funding my creativity so I could run wild with an idea like this. Maybe it would translate to some out-of-the-box winner of an idea that would revolutionize morning television! Probably not, but we’d never know if we didn’t follow through. The plan became more elaborate as the day continued, and so did our commitment to it.

At week’s end, I had the ears of both my parents for our regularly scheduled phone call.

“Tad Martin calling collect,” the operator said in classic monotone operatorspeak.

“I do NOT ACCEPT charges,” Evelyn barked. She always felt she needed to act out her rejection of the call, as though the operator were going to call bullshit on our weekly charade and report us. Sometimes I actually took her rejection personally.

A minute later the phone rang. “Well, hello, Tad!” she chirped.

“Hey, Tad,” said my dad. He loved it, too.

Step one of the plan was uneventful. I told them about Grac’s friend the Indian who looked like me. I told them he was Shawnee. They took it as typical commentary from a night out in Mad-hattan and we moved along.

The next week, I told them I’d run into my Shawnee look-alike again … and that we’d spent hours discussing his heritage and that it was interesting—even inspiring—to me.

“What’s so inspiring?” my mom asked.

“Well, his tribe had a lot of land taken away,” I stumbled. “And he just has a lot of passion about his heritage. You should really see him, Mom. I mean, we could be twins.”

“Well, maybe you’re Indian.” She chuckled. My father was silent. Probably watching TV with the phone eight inches away to reduce the impact of hearing Evelyn in quadraphonic surroundsound from the next room.

“Well, maybe I am,” I said matter-of-factly. “He’s bringing me some Shawnee books next week.”

A week later I went for the kill. “These books are fascinating.”

“What BOOKS, Andy?”

“These Shawnee books I got from Grac’s friend. I look like these guys. I’m not kidding. The bone structure, the whole thing. REALLY interesting.”

“Yeah, I bet you look like them,” my mother snickered.

“No, I mean their hair, their eyes are just like mine.”

“Uh-huh—and do they look Jewish, the Indians? JEWISH INDIANS?” She was feeling it. Her son was being a boob.

“I don’t know, Mom.” Time to turn up the volume. “I wonder sometimes…”

Pause. “You wonder WHAT?”

“Just, like, who I really am.”

“Who you really ARE? Who are you? Who do you THINK you are?”

“Well, you know … these Shawnees had reservations in Southern Illinois. And I just wonder if somehow I could have Shawnee blood or be part Shawnee.”

“What do you mean? You’re JEWISH! You’re RUSSIAN and POLISH! How do you think that happened? Do you think your grandfather had an AFFAIR with an INDIAN??”

“I don’t know. You never know. What about YOUR grandfather?”

“WHAT?!?!?! LOU!? Are you hearing this?”

My father rejoined the land of the living. “I hear it. I don’t really understand it, but I’m listening. Andy, do you think you could be an Indian, really?”

“I don’t know. I’m just thinking about it. Is that really crazy? I mean, first this guy that looks like me and now this book.”

My mother broke in. Obviously, my dad was doing no good by reasoning with me.

“The GUY who LOOKS like you has nothing to do with anything,” she said. “I don’t think there were Shawnees in Southern Illinois. I think they’re something else.”

“But you don’t KNOW, Mom. I don’t know either. I’m just thinking about it.”

“Okay,” she relented. “You’re an Indian. What do I know? Your grandfather Allen had an affair and you’re one-fourth Indian.” She chuckled as though she was going to humor me, but I knew the truth: Inside, she was in knots of fury.

Grac and I were in rotten-kid heaven. I had slowly, deliberately gotten under my parents’ skin with the most ridiculous notion since someone gave Pia Zadora a contract.

A few days later I lobbed this:

“You know what I realized? And it’s ironic, actually. You can accept me completely for being gay but not for being Shawnee.”

“WHAT?!” She screamed loud enough to rattle the
ASK ME ABOUT MY GAY SON
button on her lapel. “Oh my god, that is RIDICULOUS.”

“Well, it may be true.”

Brilliant. Mean, but brilliant.

This silliness had gone on for months when one day a new bolt of inspiration hit me during our afternoon uptown-downtown kill-time-at-work chat.

“We have to do something that gets to them in their home,” I said. “To bring the whole thing to Biltmore Drive.”

“Okay, here’s something,” Grac mused. “We should send them a letter or something from a fake, shady Shawnee organization thanking you for all the money you’ve given them. That’ll get them going: Money that you’ve spent. Wasted money, Andy. YOUR wasted money.”

My parents’ biggest fear in life has always been my sister and me “throwing money away.”

Another spoiled egg of a plan was hatched: Out of fervor for my hidden ancestry, I’d bid on a pair of Navajo Raindance boots at an auction benefiting some Displaced Navajo cause. Because now, one of my pet causes was inter-tribe unity, and I was a representative of goodwill from the Shawnee. The twist was that the boots had been mailed to my parents’ house in St. Louis because the woman who took my check wrote down the address on my driver’s license, which still had the Missouri address. The explanation was VERY iffy, but it wouldn’t get much of a second thought.

Graciela’s packaging was genius. She mocked up some letterhead using Wite-Out, scissors, and a Xerox machine and soon was “Lauren” writing from “Cause-Effective,” a nonprofit who-knows-what of which I was a “booster.” Between the words “Cause” and “Effective” was an arrow. Nice touch. The typed letter thanked me for my generous bid toward the boots and my endless enthusiasm for the organization. She handwrote and signed a PS: “All our books on Shawnee are being reordered—I will contact you when they arrive—Lauren.” The boots Grac found in her closet were perfect; leftovers from a junior high school trip to Tucson—suede and cheap and full of fringe. She attached a lot number on a Minnie Pearl tag and marked it $300. Within a week the bundle of carefully crafted crap was headed straight for suburban terror.

My mother called the moment they arrived. “CBS,” I said.

“Do you know what I just opened?” She sounded part amused, part amazed, and part pissed off.

“No, what?”

“The UGLIEST pair of SHOES that YOU supposedly BOUGHT at some auction.”

“What? What shoes? Wait. How did those get THERE? You got my Navajo Raindance boots?”

“Oh, yeah, WE GOT ’EM!” She howled. “And WHO is LAUREN?”

“Who?”

“LAUREN. She wrote you a little note. There’s a LETTER here, too, you know.”

“Oh, LAUREN! I love her. What does it say?” My nonchalance was killing her.

“Your BOOKS that you ordered will be in soon. Andy, how much money are you THROWING AWAY on this? You spent THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS on these KIDS’ COWBOY BOOTS?”

I was silent.

“This is RIDICULOUS! Do you realize that? YOU HAVE GOT TO GET OFF THIS! YOU ARE NOT AN INDIAN! WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE?”

She actually got to me. I was rattled and remorseful for the first time since we conceived of the whole thing. My mom genuinely thought I was crazy; she was worried. So was my dad, and when he called baffled about the boots, I felt like I’d gone too far, which often happens when you carelessly hatch a silly plan. Graciela agreed. “We have to end it,” she said.

I had been a Shawnee for months, and now the game was up. I was scheduled to go home a few weeks later, and I’d be there over April Fools’ Day. When better to break the news?

“That is too perfect,” said Graciela. “This is going to be the April Fools classic of our time. I need to be there.” And she was right, it would be something. But I had to do it alone.

Before I could make it home, the tide turned.

“Well, you’re never going to believe what happened today.” It was my mom on the phone. This was a common opening line, and I braced myself to hear who she’d outed me to from my childhood. Would it be Nardie Stein, my camp director? A former babysitter of mine, perhaps? My mom LOVED to out me to people. “Does Andy have a girlfriend?” someone would ask her unassumingly.

“A BOYfriend?” she’d say. “No, he hasn’t met the right GUY. He’s GAY!”

“I was at a tea at Helen Kornblum’s house,” she said this time. Right down the street, the Kornblum home was a veritable hub of the great liberal minds of the Midwest. She continued, “She has the best photography collection. You really should go by there when you’re home. Just to see it.”

“So you keep telling me,” I groaned. “What? What happened?”

“Well, you know Helen has a house in Santa Fe and collects quite a bit of art in addition to photography, and Andy, I’m NOT KIDDING: I want you to go see this photography when you’re home. IT’S REALLY SOMETHING!”

“The more you tell me to go, the more I’m
not going to.
What happened?” I was the one irritated this time.

“Okay! Jesus, you are a PILL, you know that? Anyway I met this woman who Helen knows from Santa Fe and I told her about those Navajo boots and—”

“Wait, you did what?” I interrupted.

“I told her you bought those boots at an auction and you know what she said?” Mom was gleeful now. “She said you probably got a good deal for them for three hundred dollars and that that stuff is really hot right now. Everything like that is going for big money down there!”

I was floored. She was actually EXCITED about my boots now and thought that I was on to something. She continued.

“But you know, she’s not the first person who told me that. I was telling Cheli about the whole Shawnee thing the other day.” Cheli, mom’s manicurist, knew more about me than most of my relatives did. “She said that Indian stuff is all over the place right now. And she said she knew someone who was Shawnee…”

As my mom continued, my heart was wrenched.

Acceptance. The last thing I ever expected from this whole mishegas stupid joke. My mom was beginning to accept, or at least adapt to, the lie I had been hammering into her head for months, and furthermore, she was working so hard to be okay with it that she was starting to TELL people about it. She had begun outing me as an Indian! She had accepted my being gay and now, in her way, was accepting my being an INDIAN—or at least THINKING I was one.

Do I have the best parents in the world? And do I deserve them?

On April Fools’ Day, I brought the fraudulent Navajo Raindance boots into the kitchen and set them on the counter. My parents were settling into their ritual 6 p.m. glass of J&B on the rocks when I asked them what they thought of the boots.